Spring finally arrived, and I started the month off with a trip to Sweden to take part in a week long Wildeye course in nature recording with the venerable Chris Watson and Jez Riley French. The wonderful Jana Windersen also joined us during the course to share her practice, ensuring that the trip was all the more inspiring and informative. I'll be doing a longer post detailing the course, with some audio. I'd be remiss, given the following paragraph, to not publish this one recording from the trip of a roe deer calling in the forest near the hostel I stayed at.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer screened at Cannes to a really excellent critical response, and the icing on the cake is that it jangled some nerves sufficiently enough that a few people booed it! I have been anxiously waiting to see what an audience response to it would be, since cutting the foley for it back in February, and it hasn't disappointed. It is a film that demands to be seen several times, and really burrows its way into your psyche. The amazing poster gives a small glimpse of the visual mastery at work.
Not content with the inspiration levels from a weeklong Sweden sound recording workshop, this month I've also managed to attend discussions with two auteurs of modern cinema.
Hou Hsiao-hsien gave a masterclass earlier in the month at the IFI, and spoke about his visual aesthetic and the intuitions that drive his film making. Werner Herzog was then in conversation at the National Concert Hall as part of the Dublin Literary Festival, where he spoke about the books that have inspired him and influenced his world view. What became evident with both filmmakers is that they are modern pilgrims; searching for a universal truth by being uncompromising in their work and driven by a faith in their personal vision.
Herzog included a reading list that is also required reading for his Rogue Film School:
- Virgil’s “Georgics”
- Ernest Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”
- Baker's "The Peregrine" (New York Review Books Edition published by HarperCollins).
- The Warren Commission Report
- “The Poetic Edda”, translated by Lee M. Hollander (in particular The Prophecy of the Seeress)
- Bernal Diaz del Castillo “True History of the Conquest of New Spain”